HappySalesman

iTrader: (3)

Hey all,

so a couple of weeks ago, some jack*** in a parking lot hit my car with a shopping cart, and managed to scrape a good chunk of paint off of the passenger corner of my rear bumper. Didn't do any damage to the bumper cover itself though.

So my problem is this: While I would love to repaint the bumper myself, and save some money, I have no experience in automotive painting, and I have no paint booth/place to do a high-quality paint job.

I'm tempted to get some dupli-color spray paint from oreilly's, and some clear, but I've heard of how low quality it is..

So, my question is this: Would rattle-canning it myself look horrible? (The car is black btw, so color matching isn't a major issue) or is the 1k the body shop quoted me worth it?

Thanks (and sorry for the long post)

LS1-450

iTrader: (33)

Could also buy an aerosol sprayer. Has aerosol can mounted to a glass jar (low cost). Then buy a pint of urethane stock color base coat & a pint of urethane clear. If the scratch goes down to the plastic, use a small amount of filler to bring the scratch level with the rest of the paint & then primer, first.

HappySalesman

iTrader: (3)

Considering how thin the paint is I dunno if body filer would be necessary. I think this might be aftermarket bumper. Hers a pic of the damage

jlcustomz

anything you do that's not full on automotive primer, single stage , or base clearcoat can be considered temporary & sanded back off later. For a temporary on my custom steel ground effects and up to the bodyline, I used dupli-color's ceramic engine paint in black. They have a clear also, but when I did my stuff with it the air was too damp & it came out hazy, went to black only since I was in a hurry for a show the next day. Did a partial color sand & buff on it later, that was about 2 years ago.
The spray can stuff on my vehicle was partly just an experiment for others to see how it could do. I do have real paint & spray guns, though not my own proper place to spray.

Rust oleum black enamel can also sand & buff out reasonably well once dried. All spray can paint will fade quicker & need more constant cleaning to match. There are different blacks, but
GM's basic black & most universals are damn close. In buying real paint, there are a few parts to the paint, such as hardners & reducers, so you have to buy more than what you need.

If you have to do actual bodywork on the bumper, evercoat had eurosoft & some other name of flexible filler. Should be able to feather out the broke paint by just sanding though.

If you know nothing about paint & want to learn rather than spend more than a little money, you don't have much to loose trying here. $1k does sound a little steep for just a bumper. Your current bumper likely has poor adhesion & would need to be stripped to do a 100% quality proper paint job on. I could likely buy a whole new bumper & pay a few certain places to properly paint it for me, then install myself. As a future option, you could get an upgrade bumper, such as from 6literdesigns on this site & have it painted. Anytime you can turn a repair into an upgrade, that's something to consider.

HappySalesman

iTrader: (3)

I would love to upgrade my bumper. But it appears my only options (from 6LE anyway) are CME bumpers, everything else is just a valence. Not that I mind CME, but the cost of adding that on, as well as the bumper, and then the paint on top of it I think would get expensive quick.

6LITEREATER

iTrader: (56)

^^E-mail gil@6LEDesigns.com We have a couple laying around, just haven't gotten around to listing them. I THINK we have a couple CME's (the full bumpers, the ones we made and the Zr1 style, not just the CME valances) and I KNOW there's a diffuser bumper sitting at McNord's house never installed he'd probably sell...